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Drugs

How the Drug Trade in British Clubs Has Changed for the Millennial Generation

Tracking how the trade of drugs in clubs has shifted over the past 20 years in the UK.
Max Daly
London, GB

It's been 20 years since the ecstasy pill swallowed by Leah Betts was traced back to Raquel's, a nightclub in Basildon where drug sales were being run by a bunch of gangsters called the "Essex Boys." The venue's notoriety led to a succession of tabloid stings and drug squad raids that forced Raquel's—and its replacement, Club Uropa—to close.

At this time, organized criminals around Britain—such as the Essex firm, which controlled drug dealing in dozens of clubs in London, Essex, and Suffolk—were muscling in on the blossoming ecstasy trade. Clubs were filled with dealers sanctioned by doormen, and controlled by organized crime gangs.

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Cindy, a career criminal with connections to London's old school crime network, is now in her early 50s. In the 1990s she was selling pills at the Ministry of Sound during its heyday. "I stood in the special corridor where all the drug dealers stood," she tells me. "There was no cloak and dagger stuff; I had free reign because I knew the dealer who sorted all the doormen out with their drugs, so they left me well alone."

A Trade club night in London. Photo courtesy of Trade

In 2009, the Ministry of Sound's multi-millionaire Old Etonian owner James Palumbo wrote about his problems trying to oust the organized drug market that operated within his club.

A report published by the Home Office in 1998, Clubs, Drugs, and Doormen, revealed the extent to which gangsters had infiltrated the nightclub drug trade in Merseyside and Northumbria. In Liverpool, for example, it described a "well-organized criminal operation" in which a registered security firm took control of a large section of the door supervisor market through intimidation and bribery. "Once this was achieved, the criminals behind the firm used their position to facilitate and dominate drug dealing within the premises they were charged to protect," wrote the author, Sheridan Morris. It was a strategy, the report said, of "control the doors, control the floors."

The report joined a chorus of police and politicians calling for a major clampdown on the nightclub drug trade, with tighter controls over venue licensing, bouncer registration, and increased undercover police surveillance.

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Two decades and millions of dance floor transactions later, Britain's nightclub drug trade is altered—diminished, in fact—but still very much alive.

The days of clubs being swamped with resident dealers and underworld gangs are, in the main, over. You do find the odd club owner and bouncer trying to make a bit of extra cash on the side by selling drugs, but the profit-risk factor has become less attractive to the gangs, while the clubbers are finding it easier to buy elsewhere.

"Ten years ago pills were £20 ($28) to £25 ($35), so there was a lot of profit to be made," says Dr. Robert Ralphs, a criminologist at Manchester Metropolitan University. "But the price drop, plus the added police presence, sniffer dogs, and airport-style searches you get at places such as The Warehouse Project and Sankeys means it's harder to get drugs in—there's more chance of detection. So for the professionals, the profit isn't worth it."

These days, clubbers are far more likely to buy drugs from their friends and acquaintances, especially before going into clubs, rather than from professional dealers inside venues. But while some high profile nightspots have been forced to shut for failing to do enough to stop their guests from buying and taking drugs, there are still tens of thousands of people each week getting high and dancing in Britain's clubs.

Researcher Bina Bhardwa, who spent 18 months interviewing drug users in clubs around the UK, found that a heavy security presence and physical searches at the door had little effect on the amount of drugs making their way through. She said that the clubs' bark was worse than their bite, with most showing an outward display of zero tolerance, while turning a blind-eye to drug use and supply inside.

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Illustration by Cei Willis

Adam, a manager at one of the best known clubs in northwest England, tells me that four years ago there was a laid back attitude to drugs. "We were instructed to make sure no club security entered the toilets and to turn a blind eye to punters who were taking drugs amid the crowd on the dance floor," he says. "There was no random searching of customers on entry, no drugs detection dog on the front door. We were instructed not to actively seek out drug dealers, instead just to apprehend those who were too blatant to ignore or who were happened upon by chance."

When two clubbers were hospitalized after taking some dodgy pills, a police and council clampdown at the club stipulated that any seized drugs were to be placed in an amnesty box to which only the general manager and police correspondent had a key. The dealer's passport or driver's license would then be photocopied and be passed on to the police. This would be the same for anyone caught out by the drugs dog upon trying to enter the venue.

Adam tells me that, on paper, the club is doing exactly what the police demanded, but that the reality is different. "If every dealer we caught was reported to the police they would likely shut the club down, as initially we would catch about six a night," he says. "Instead, the dealers would be searched and their ID photocopied. They would be told the police would be notified and they would be thrown out the venue. However, the photocopy would go in a file in the office, the police would never be notified and the drugs would go in the amnesty box, which was later accessed by directors and superior management, entirely for their personal use and never for resale.

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"The only dealing tolerated within the club now, as it was four years ago, is conducted by a certain individual personally known to the general manager. Despite the restrictions in place, and the increased vigilance toward drug dealing within the club, this specific individual is allowed to enter the club at whatever time they arrive via off-camera entrances, and are permitted to sell within the venue as they please, often to the DJs who are performing on the night and their tour managers and entourage. This is of no personal gain to any of the management; it is viewed as a necessary part of a working nightclub, regardless of whether or not the council and police try to restrict it or not."

Adam says that the restrictions placed on the club by the police encourage the venue management to exercise more control over drug-related activity rather than attempt to eradicate it completely.

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One of the new breed of club dealers is James, a 22-year-old accountancy student from Sheffield who sells MDMA powder and ketamine. "I sell in places where I go with my friends, usually warehouse-type house, D&B, techno clubs outside Sheffield and Manchester city centers that don't have high security, where they are relaxed towards dealing," he says. "It's risky—there are always the people who take out their purse on the dance floor and hold it up to the light. You have to have your wits about you. For example, if someone in their 30s comes up to me and asks for 50 pills I don't go near it. The skill is not to look shifty; none of this taking people into a dark corner stuff, just get it done: slap it in their hand and tell them how much."

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James says that in the clubs where he sells there seems to be an unspoken agreement between club owners, security, dealers, and clubbers to keep the drug trade going, despite the attention of outsiders, such as police and criminals. "Everyone works together," he tells me. "As long as you are not mugging clubs off, and you are subtle and respectful, they are OK. There is actually a friendly atmosphere between staff and dealers."

Even so, running a club is now a risky business, not because you might get offers of protection from a thug in a matte black BMW, but because you face the risk of losing your license or going to jail.

If a drug user happens to take a fatal dose inside their walls, clubs are seen as being culpable, especially if it is claimed the drugs were bought at the venue. Deaths are used as a stick to beat owners into submitting to heightened security and draconian regulations, measures which can deter dealers but which have little impact on clubbers intent on dancing on drugs.

The line between criminal complicity with drug sellers and the reality of trying to manage a crowded dance venue has blurred. In 2006, club owner Manoucehr Bahmanzadeh and promoter Tom Costelloe were charged with "allowing" ecstasy to be sold at the Dance Academy in Plymouth. While the court accepted the men operated a zero tolerance policy towards drugs (police found only 16 dealers at the club during six months of undercover surveillance) and there was no evidence linking them to drug selling, the pair were sentenced to a total of 14 years.

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Clubbers have felt the heat, too. The last decade has seen security slowly ratcheted up, with many of the bigger venues compelled by police and local licensing boards to use a raft of ethically-dodgy measures to keep drugs out, including ID scanning, drug testing, sniffer dogs, intrusive searches, and wall-to-wall, budget-sapping CCTV systems.

Alan Miller, who shut down his Vibe Bar in London's Brick Lane after being regulated into oblivion, believes clubs which do not introduce strict controls for drugs are targeted by the police. "If clubs refuse to have ID scans and breathalyzers they are seen as a problem," he says. "If they report drug finds it's used against them. If someone takes drugs before they come into a club and is ill we are accountable. It's suffocating. In the UK there is a mentality that we can shut these things down and limit them. Are ID scans, searches and CCTV at clubs going to stop people using drugs? No. Will these things stop people coming to clubs? Yes."

And he's right. Because of the increased security and the mass closures of venues around the country, some clubbers are finding alternative places where they can take drugs and dance all night without getting harassed.

Mark, a DJ and club promoter, says the growing number of underground house parties springing up offer an alternative way of doing things: "At these events, our bouncers search for weapons, not drugs. There's a relaxed atmosphere to drugs; people can smoke weed, drugs are openly taken but not openly sold, as most people buy them beforehand.

"It's no surprise that clubbers are migrating away from mainstream venues toward independent house parties and underground club nights," says Mark. "High prices, ID scanning, sniffer dogs, and gulag-style bouncers have turned a night out dancing into an expensive, straight-jacketed ordeal where your drugs get nicked off you at the door and re-sold to you on the dance floor."

Taking pills and dancing in clubs could be going full circle, back to when ecstasy was openly necked in venues and no one gave a shit. Or maybe not. But despite the best attempts by police, councils, and criminals over the past 20 years to grab the nightclub drug trade by the scruff of the neck, what's clear is that it continues in its own, conspiratorial way.

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